Can the Digital Economy Improve the Quality of the Marine Environment? Empirical Evidence from Coastal Provinces and Cities in China

Studying the impact of digital economy development on marine environmental quality has important theoretical and practical significance for achieving a win–win situation between high-quality economic development and high-level ecological environment protection. This article selects the marine environment of coastal provinces and cities in China from 2011 to 2022 as the research object and uses the entropy method to comprehensively evaluate the quality of marine environment and the level of digital economy. Also, we construct intermediary and threshold effect models to deeply explore the impact mechanism of digital economy development on marine environmental quality. We find that digital economy and marine environmental quality both show a wave-like rising trend, but the comprehensive level is relatively low. The development of the digital economy can effectively improve the level of marine environmental quality, and the digital economy promotes the improvement of marine environmental quality by improving the level of marine economy. The level of economic development and industrial scale has created a threshold effect in the process of promoting the development of marine environmental quality through the digital economy. Therefore, strengthening the digital governance of the marine environment and promoting the industrialization of marine ecology and the ecologicalization of marine industries will help promote the integrated development of the digital economy and marine environment.